The Bullaculla 3 link SAS build (pic heavy)

not a big deal man. Sorry it gave you a hard time.

 

Frame plate from Eddy at SOS concepts all welded up! There are a few spots that needed a lot of buttering up due to low spots in the frame. Shooting solid wire out of the mig gun and back stepping made it go pretty quick.

 

Props on the build, love the attention to detail. And even bigger props to cutting up such a new truck! Subd.

 

Looks great buddy. Can't wait to start on my sas already.

 

Can you expand on what you mean by this? Putting unburned wire in the gap and then welding over it?

 

No, just using solid wire to MIG weld instead of flux core, or stick welding. No slag to clean off with solid wire. back stepping is just welding a few inches, then going backward past the start of the previous weld and running another pass to the start to keep it from getting too hot. Like playing backwards leap frog

 

Ok cool, didn't know the name for that, thanks! Sort of like stitching, but with the stiches moving in a single direction.

 

I got the crossmember brackets all welded into place, and painted it all up. Very happy with this.

Now to chop off the last part. The trans crossmember brackets. The fuel and brake lines above it make it sketchy...

@1uzrnr let me borrow his plasma again, and that makes it go quick.

This is as close to the fuel lines as I wanted to get with the plasma cutter...

And now my favorite part again! Grinding

 

That stock trans crossmember is a bitch to get all trimmed and ground off. That's about as close as I got on the one I am doing too.

Looks like your build is going about as fast as mine as well haha

 

Cool! What did you do for a crossmember?

 

Nothing yet. Waiting for the owner of the truck to decide what he is doing for the transfer case setup (crawl box with FJ case, Atlas, etc..) before I start that part yet. I think he is leaning toward the crawl box option so if that happens, I will just build a crossmember that utilizes the stock mount on the bottom of the transmission plus the one on the crawl box.

 

I think the one I have now is temporary also. I want to see how much room I end up with so I can try and design one that clears the links and also uses the stock mount.

 

So I decided to quit being lazy and unclipped the fuel and brake lines, and tied them off as far away as possible. That gave me enough room to plasma off the last top part of the drivers side bracket. But I did manage to destroy 3 of those plastic clips that hold all the lines.

Then proceeded to finish grinding off all the welds.
Now I finally can get to tacking up all the link brackets and check for clearance and binding.

Getting there!

 

TFTI

 

How's your cheeks?

 

That has nothing to do with grinding.

 

Just tacked a few brackets into place according to all pros specs. Might have to move a little forward, but we'll try and make it work. Need to mount steering box to see how much room got up front.

The link brackets are very nice.

2" diameter solid 7075 aluminum lower links. Had to cut off the flange off my brand new Doug thorley headers

Still need to notch the inside corner of the frame so the links can come up a little more. Also gotta trim the top link bracket on the axle. This is nearly as high as it will go right now, but I want to get it up a couple more inches.

 

So as you can see here, the passenger side top link bracket they gave me is enormous...

I can trim it to get it to stuff a little more, but when the drivers side tire drops, the top of the bracket will swing into the engine.
So the plan is to remove a strip from the middle, plug the extra bolt holes above it and trim as much as possible.

I made some steel slugs, 45 degree chamfer on both sides, with a 1/16" landing in the middle. It's about 0.010" thicker than the bracket so I can grind it flush after it's welded.

Here it is after some surgery with the band saw. I will make a 0.010-0.015" oversized dummy spacer to keep the sides parallel during welding. Now I gotta grind some bevels and weld it up. It'll be easy to weld in the plugs while it's apart.

It's still very beefy, and I'll still need to space the heim joint with some 1/8" spacers. I didn't want to come all the way into the top link heim. Gotta let it have some room to flex

 

good surgery on that bracket.

if it doesn't work see if you can get one from Ruff Stuff or Ballistic Fabrication. I bet they can do a custom one if you give them measurements.

But it seems like what you did will work.

I ended up not using my upper link tower. Instead, a custom truss was built covering the D60 pumpkin, tall enough to create enough vertical separation between the upper and lower link. On top of the truss we welded regular tabs to hold a heim joint in place.